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Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

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Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#241

Post by tshaddox »

ping_pong wrote: post #233
afavour wrote: post #13

The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. I won't mourn movie theatres (though I ho…

When was the last great comedy movie you've seen in the movie theatres? I posed this question to my buddies and we were genuinely stumped. For me it was probably early 2000s, but nothing in the last 15 years that's for sure.

When’s the last time your “list of great comedy movies” got a new entry, regardless of whether you saw the new entry in the cinema or even if it was a new film at the time you saw it?

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#242

Post by okareaman »

I don't work in the movie industry, but it seems to me the superhero and fast and furious type movies are designed to appeal to young people in America, China, India and Europe. A movie like that offers an incredibly large potential audience.

Three films I watched recently that might have a hard time getting made today are Broken Flowers by Jim Jarmusch starring Bill Murray, After Hours by Martin Scorsese and The Muse by Albert Brooks. I know Martin Scorsese and others have been complaining about the death of cinema, but I don't understand why the two types of movies can't coexist on streaming media. The audience for the latter type is nowhere near as big as the former, but it's not nothing. The world still wants thought provoking art.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#243

Post by Flatcircle »

nineplay wrote: post #53
handrous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much re…

> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. It feels different. Spi…

it's so true. These days a "fun" movie will be super dark and violent, or insanely cheesy. There's no slick, fun, adventure films anymore.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#244

Post by ping_pong »

tshaddox wrote: post #241
ping_pong wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last great comedy movie you've seen in the movie theatres? I posed this question to my buddies and we were genuinely stumped. For me it was probably early 2000s, but nothing in the last 15 years that's for sure.

When’s the last time your “list of great comedy movies” got a new entry, regardless of whether you saw the new entry in the cinema or even if it was a new film at the time you saw it?

Every couple of years? But I do think the frequency of straight up comedies being produced is dwindling, and aren't popular enough to go to a movie theatre for.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#245

Post by raydev »

Apocryphon wrote: post #134
jfengel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HBO had been doing it for a few years, with shows like The Wire and Deadwood. But Breaking Bad helped bring it to a wider audience, since AMC is basic cable rather than premium. (AMC had launched into that a year before with Mad Men, which was similarly TV as good film.)

I think the turn of the century start of the prestige drama cable age was The Sopranos , with The West Wing doing something similar on network TV.

WW was still quite formulaic. ER, NYPD Blue, etc were all shows that maybe pushed for more consistent storylines but they were still boxed in by old school network expectations, and they got their starts in the mid-90s.

Sopranos was a very clear break in writing style. People like to slot in The Wire next to it, but The Wire was more episodic/restricted and honestly felt like an R-rated network tv show to me.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#246

Post by blooalien »

hallarempt wrote: post #148
iNane9000 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How does one even find or acquire films today? I’d love to watch a movie, but literally don’t know how to go about it anymore. Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not movies and basically spam to me.

My wife and I used to buy a DVD in the second-hand books/new dvd's shop round the corner every Friday for a Friday-night movie viewing. He knew our tastes -- it must be sweet, funny with a happy ending and no adultery or rape -- but the shop closed. We regularly ask each other "Where's Roman Holiday but with a cute girl instead of Gregory Peck. Audrey Hepburn can stay."? Why all the drama in movies these days? We jus…

> Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.

Okay, seriously? That's a really good idea right there. I personally would lean towards Blender + Godot game engine for such a project, but I'm just hugely in favor of open source in general, so… The thing to make such a tool useful though would be an easily accessible library of actors (character models), animation/movement presets/prefab library, scenery and set dressing, and an interface to tie it all together in a way "which would make it a doddle for ordinary people" as you say. I could see something like that bein' a huge boon for "storyteller" types to get a good start in the media creation arena though.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#247

Post by smogcutter »

ryandrake wrote: post #208
nineplay wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. It feels different. Spi…

There was a thread[1] earlier in the week lamenting how tough it is to make modern comedies. Between the Twitter mobs scrutinizing anything for insensitivity and the need to appeal to international markets, it's really hard to come up with a universally funny and PC-acceptable comedy anymore. You can't do slapstick or silliness. You can't (even gently) poke fun at "groups" anymore. Best you can do is a cynical "dark…

This is bizarre, willfully blind take in a world where Always Sunny is one of the longest running comedy series of all time.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#248

Post by marnett »

iNane9000 wrote: post #93
handrous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much re…

How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How does one even find or acquire films today? I’d love to watch a movie, but literally don’t know how to go about it anymore. Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not movies and basically spam to me.

Friendly plug for kanopy.com. Amazing, changing collection and likely free signup and streaming (monthly-refreshing limit) with your local library card (:

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#249

Post by tshaddox »

elliekelly wrote: post #169
afavour wrote: post #13

The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. I won't mourn movie theatres (though I ho…

> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. I feel like I “missed” the beginning of all the super hero franchises and, even though I’m sure I’d enjoy them, I’m just not interested because getting caught up enough to understand what’s going on in the newer films feels like such a daunting undertaking. At the start of the pandemic I thought mayb…

> It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie.

There’s nothing new about sequels and movie series. The only difference with Marvel movies might be that they are a lot of films and they tend to be some of the most popular films.

> Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are.

Fans might enjoy discussing nuances of different viewing orders, but I think it’s pretty undeniable that you can’t go too wrong watching them in the order they were released.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#250

Post by irrational »

afavour wrote: post #156
mumblemumble wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially, last night I half-listened to an interesting YouTube video that used the history of Robin Hood movies to describe this trend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well: "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there long enou…

I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but I think no matter your political stripes we can agree that the general mood of the country has been not great since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn't happen.

I’ve felt tremendously better since Biden was elected and, as an introvert, the lockdown for the past year and a half has done wonders for my mental health. I’m happy now than I’ve ever been (at least for the past four decades).
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